I feel like I should have something clever to say here. The thing is, I've been really struggling with depression (and boredom), so I'm torn between wanting my whole life outsourced and knowing I'd be bored to death with even less to do.

I would have several robots take macrodoses so that I could see what I'm like after I break on through to the other side. Though Sid Barrett probably provides much of an answer.

I think that only living once among other people is a pretty essential part of being human-- imagining worlds where consequences are diminished or opportunities are amplified is IMO an error. Allowing nondestructive avenues in life that are much more constrained and less forgiving than the easier choices is better for growth, I think. I don't particularly do this, and am often disattisfied with myself.

If the robot could just write my papers and house/chore stuff I would be so so happy. I might even still do the dishes myself, I really just want it to deal with house upkeep/emergencies and take care of mail and clothes clutter.

This seemed like a nightmare scenario for me - one night Ayelet is tired so she sends her robot to have sex with Michael. Michael goes on and on about how this was the best sex ever, and doesn't understand why the sex they have the next morning isn't nearly as transcendent.

Weeding Bermuda grass. Picking cherry tomatoes (but not the large tomatoes, and I would normally try to avoid planting cherry tomatoes in favor of big tomatoes but the team I sent for the starts came back with more cherry tomato plants than I would have). Definitely weeding Bermuda grass. Folding laundry and putting it away, but not hanging it on the line.

Actually, I quite like fantasizing about being able to use the implant personality module that Marid Audran uses to do boring routine work without thinking about it in the George Alec Effinger novel A Fire In The Sun. In fact, if I had that, I'd say my life would be pretty much perfect.

Ooh, this is fun. We just hired a house cleaner, but I didn't do any of that in the first place. I wonder whether it will be as amazing as we hope it will. I'd like a robot to cook weeknight dinners, which are becoming an increasing drag. I like cooking, but I hate when I run late and we don't eat until 9 because I planned something semi-involved and the boyfriend hates take-out. And yard work. I would outsource all the yardwork. I keep trying to figure out how to hire someone whose job is "weed the gardens. No new plantings, no landscaping. Just weed." I like the rest of my life pretty well and would probably keep most of it.

27: It's been a really good decision for the kids, for my career, in terms of real estate -- any way to set up my life to avoid the commute would have meant either leaving NYC or being wildly overstretched in terms of paying for living space. But I've been doing it for a very long time now.

I have a vague dislike for Ayelet Waldman, but can't really remember where it comes from or even who she is, other than that she is married to Michael Chabon, whom I also have an ambient dislike for, maybe because he's super into comic books and that's annoying? Who knows. Maybe I can have a robot get to the bottom of my vague and ambient prejudices. Sometimes they turn out to be helpful, like with someone else who came up on Unfogged recently and turned out to be bad but whom I've already forgotten.

Wait, is this a thought exercise designed to elicit "what would you pay people to do if you had enough money and/or use slaves for if you had slaves"? I mean, housecleaning, most cooking, and yard work, obvs, or what people with money pay servants to do or people with slaves make them do.

37: But you can't really just hire somebody to build you a cob house and have it be the same as one you build yourself. The point of building it yourself is you can build it somewhere so remote you can't get machinery of the kind that people you would hire would use. But the robot can build it anywhere.

I think the point is for you to optimize your own schedule for self-fulfillment.

Right, I'm waffling between two versions of the question. One is, "what tasks do you find unpleasant and would like to pass off to somebody else?" (yardwork is the first thing to come to mind). The other is, "what things do you do primarily to satisfy other people such that if the other people could be satisfied without you needing to do anything you would be happier?" That's a much tougher question to answer -- there are many things that I do which I am not excited about but which have value to other people but, for most of those, I do take satisfaction from the fact that I am the person providing that value. It would be hard to give them up.

I should get a robot to read Mysteries of Pittsburgh for me. I haven't read the wikipedia plot summary because I feel I should read the actual book, but then I remember that the book is going to be really dull.

Oh man, what's wouldn't I outsource? Not much. In fact, everything, but not all the time. So I'd still spend time with my family for a few hours a week. I think that covers 100% of what I wouldn't have a robot do.

What if the other members of the family also outsource their family duties? Would all the robots continue going through the motions? Or just end the pitiful charade and take some well-deserved time off?

I would get the robot to manage my time, optimize my schedule, and make the difficult decisions about where I should put my energy (work vs writing vs music vs political commitment). I would absolutely do everything else if I could defer wisdom and judgment to the wise, judicious robot. Just the thought of this is kind of a relief.

My robot would do the grading so goddamned fast. And the laundry and basic housecleaning. And maybe it would be delegated to deal with the children when they're shouty and demanding. (Today's drama: baby girl wants Eggos but decides to call them pancakes, then changes her mind and demands toast, and then changes her mind to demand waffles.)

This is terrible because it would appear that I am actively harming the world, including my loved ones, by not allowing the superior robot to exercise its superior talents at every turn. My best strategy would be to cease existence and let the robot go on better than I might have been.

whom I also have an ambient dislike for, maybe because he's super into comic books and that's annoying?

don't hate on husband x.

if the robot could work out for me and the benefits be transferred to me somehow then I would have the robot do that and I would get swole. or maybe lithe like a panther. about half the cooking, I think, and having had a maid who vacuumed and mopped the whole apartment every day, I know how magical it is, so, that. I like it enough that after our maid left our employ recently I did it myself twice a week and dry mopped the other days, because I am a maniac. if you leave your shoes outside always, you should be able to walk around the apartment with the soles of your feet pink from the shower and never dirty. my in-laws' house is killing me with crud on the floor but I fear it will be seen as passive-agressive rather than helpful if I make them dig out the vacuum cleaner and use a wet mop when they a) never vacuum and b) always use these big dry mops with reusable heads and seem to think water will kill their wood floors somehow, no matter how much oil soap is in there. they don't mind me cleaning their stove top, though. OK, I apparently feel too strongly about this.

laundry? kitty litter changing is a no-brainer. grocery shopping? I like to look at the items, but the robot could facetime me. cleaning the bathroom manaically every day. if the robot could be in pain for me that would be great. read meaningful books? am I getting everything ported over to my brain/body? my children are teenagers now so they don't require much annoying tending other than laundry and cleaning their rooms. they are chill.

ajay, I am not one to recommend eating food, because I have decided mildly starving myself if a modest form of self-harm that is more or less OK, even though at some level I can see it's not cool. I legit can't decide whether my youngest (at 5'5" and 97 pounds) might be developing an eating disorder because my eating habits are so sketchy it's hard to see. she makes me eat, though, and will do it if I do. nonetheless, you should eat food.

66.2: I have made myself eat three meals almost every day for the last six weeks or so, which I've previously only done in recent memory during health emergencies. It's awful and annoying but obviously good for me, and I'm also ravenous all the time I guess because my thyroid medicine has kicked in. I would make baseline eating a robot job and only bother when there's pleasure for sure. I don't know what else.

I think we established, like, 12 years ago that I would totally fuck my clone. there was some question about whether the clones would be genderbent; I assume the problem would be easier to solve with robots. meanwhile, husband x, having asked me what I was laughing about (opinionated, confused t-shirt store, natch) said, when I explained about the would you question, "don't you guys ever talk about anything else?" this seems unfair.

I would like to robot-outsource planning children's birthday parties, which seem like a great deal of overthinking stress for only infinitesimal amounts of appreciation. I think we have now spent two hours agonizing over what kind of (%^&*%^*&) goodie bags to provide, failing to come up with a transcendent theme, and being reluctant to acknowledge that we have already spent more time thinking about it than the kids themselves will.

I would like to robot-outsource planning children's birthday parties, which seem like a great deal of overthinking stress for only infinitesimal amounts of appreciation.

The absolute worst moment of the year is that moment where you're down at kid height, cutting the cake, and children and swarming all over you and jostling for position and pointing out what slice they want. Your back hurts, little fingers keep darting around, and all the whining and grabbing at your attention.

Lesson 1: take the cake up and elsewhere to cut it. Also cupcakes are easier.
Lesson 2: hand the task off altogether.

At work my robot would train first-year grad students in all the basic labby stuff, and take over all responsibilities that require reading student writing. I would give a lot for a robot that would just do the last bit.

I just got a new iPhone 8 after using a Samsung and holy shit but I can barely read Unfogged on either Safari or Chrome the font is so small and changing the accessibility settings to make the font larger does nothing. This is like a good portion of what I use my cell phone for the other thing being using Whatsapp (which won't port my messages to the iPhone but that's another issue). Anyone using an iPhone and reading Unfogged? What am I doing wrong?

tag to the Head of every page, and also remove the hardcoded 425-pixel width from the horizontal lines between comments.

Until Nosflow gets around to it, you can use a bookmarklet to inject those fixes with Javascript. Create a new bookmark (I'd suggest putting it in Favorites) named "Fix UF" or something, and for the URL, copy-paste this:

Duplication is a fool's paradise. Our first doubles discover to us the indifference of faces. At home I dream that with others cleaning, with others working, I can be intoxicated by leisure and lose my sadness. I have my robot pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside it is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. It seeks the closet, and the palaces. It affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but it is not intoxicated. I go with my robot wherever it goes.

I like the thought experiment. I suspect I'd outsource too much of anything. Like, I enjoy my work (and have way too much identity associated with it), but really prize the critical moments -- much less the scrutinizing between successes.

Similarly, I enjoy cooking, and will happily whip up some cream for strawberries, or get out of bed to create coffee cake muffins. But routine, every day dinners... yeah, I'd outsource those.

Weeding's fine for the first fifteen minutes at a stretch; it's nice to be out in the sun, even crouching and kneeling are good because I don't move that way often otherwise. Eventually the sensation tips over into strain/pain and I'm ready to be done, but it's nice at first.

The big benefit would be doing all of the things that I slough off now; unlike alameida, my floors get pretty gross between moppings. Mopping definitely goes into the robot task list, though again it's good at first and I appreciate the result.

The robot gets dishes... and some routine check in conversations, and most phone calls. Hmm... the robot's taking over!

I did smile at Heebie's self description as a housecat; I have a lot of the same thing going.